The Content Marketer’s Dictionary

"Officespeak" aside, marketers are notorious for using countless made up and misused marketing terms and abbreviations. Here’s a quick glossary that you can keep handy on your phone, at your desk, or even on the desktop of your computer, should you need to peek at it once in a while.

In this collection
1 Guide / 15 Minutes

Join NewsCred Insights to access this collection and other resources.

A.

A/B Testing: This is a controlled, equal test to determine the impact of conditions on a single variable. For instance, you might A/B test headlines, copy, images on a homepage by running two different versions of the homepage viewable to random audiences.

Above the Fold: This refers to the area of the site that is immediately visible upon loading. Generally, content and advertisements that are located “above the fold” receive higher click through rates.

Annual Contract Value (ACV): ACV is the annual revenue paid to your company by a specific customer, regardless of multi-year contracts.

Ad Space: The section of a website that is allocated for advertising.

Ad Network: An Ad Network is a group of sites that sell advertising space.

Adwords: A paid service provided by Google where advertisers can bid on keywords in order to have ads appear in Google’s search network.

Analytics: Analytics include the gathering and interpretation of data. For instance, social analytics yield engagement rates, number of shares and mentions, virality, channel growth — to name a few.

Articles Viewed: The number of articles that have been read during your defined date range. Prospects who became customers because of the content your brand provides.

Attribution: Usually refers to the catalyst of a particular outcome. With lead generation, it’s important to determine if leads can be attributed to marketing activities or sales activities.

Awareness: Brands try to achieve “awareness,” recognition and preference from target audiences, through a variety of advertising, marketing and PR activities. Social media is considered a leading driver of awareness.

Average Engaged Time: Average amount of time a user has spent engaged on the page. This is generated by tracking each time a reader interacts with their browser (moves the mouse, scrolls).

B.

B2B: A type of commerce transaction that exists between businesses, such as those involving a manufacturer and wholesaler, or a wholesaler and a retailer. Business to business refers to business that is conducted between companies, rather than between a company and individual consumers.

B2C: Business or transactions conducted directly between a company and consumers who are the end-users of its products or services. Business to consumer as a business model differs significantly from the business to business model, which refers to commerce between two or more businesses.

Backlinks: Backlinks (inbound links, incoming links) are links from an external site to a specific webpage. For instance, NewsCred backlinks to other content marketing and journalism blogs from our blog. More backlinks from authoritative content marketing sites will improve your SEO for the content marketing search term.

Behavioral Targeting: On nearly all major social networks, brands are able to target content and advertisements to users by collecting psychographic data from users’ profiles.

Big Rock Content: Large thought leadership pieces that not only illustrate your unique point of view, but that you can also break up and use to create smaller content pieces.

Bit.ly: Bit.ly is a link shortening service; however, the term “bit.ly” has become a bit of an eponym. There are many other URL shortening services available, which shorten links, collect link data, and skirt character-length restrictions for social networks and SMS.

Blog: An informative or entertaining site maintained by companies or individuals. For example, B2B companies have started investing in “blogs” as content hubs and a channel for promoting thought leadership and products, and driving brand awareness.

Bottom of the Funnel: This refers to the later stage of the buying cycle, where consumers evaluate products and have demonstrated intent to purchase. As prospects reach the bottom of the funnel, they may be passed from marketing to sales.

Bounce Rate: Bounce Rate is the percentage of site visitors that leave the site after only viewing one page. You can improve Bounce Rates by featuring engaging content, additional links, and obvious CTAs.

Brand Awareness: Early-stage prospects who find their way to your brand’s site via content.

Burn Pixel: A burn pixel code is a tracking code used for retargeting campaigns. The burn pixel code is used on websites to identify visitors who transform and who don’t need to be served retargeting ads. This snippet of code is placed in a post-transaction page.

Buying Cycle: The Buying Cycle refers to the consumer’s process of realizing a problem, evaluating solutions, and purchasing a product that addresses their needs. A basic buying cycle starts with the “early stage” where the consumer is realizing a new problem or need, “middle stage” where they look for solutions and evaluate products, and “late stage” where they are deciding which product to purchase.

Buyer Personas: The quantitative and qualitative set of characteristics that define your target buyer. Role or function, company size, business problems, web behavior, and demographic information are just part of a buyer persona. Consider personal and professional qualities, concerns, and competencies for a deep understanding of what motivates your buyers in their purchase decisions.

C.

Call-to-Action (CTA): The action that you’d like your customer to do after experiencing your marketing. For instance, when users come to NewsCred’s blog, we use pop-up sign-up forms to encourage them to sign up for our newsletter.

Check-in: When a person announces their arrival or presence at a particular location (i.e. hotel, airport or bar, store) on a social network. Brands may use check-ins for promotional purposes, such as discounts, mayorships, and surprise rewards.

Churn: The process of customers switching to other suppliers for various reasons.

Click Through Rate (CTR): is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of impressions, page views, or queries you received. For example, if you have five clicks and 1000 impressions, then your CTR is 0.5%.

Content Management System: Program that allows publishing, editing and modifying content as well as maintenance from a central interface.

Conversion: When a specific action is performed by the intended target audience. For instance, when a consumer sees an ad, clicks the ad, and then completes an online purchase.

Copy: Unique writing done on social media or email marketing designed to give your brand a unique voice.

Cost Per Click (CPC): The revenue you earn each time a visitor clicks on your ad. This is usually determined by the advertisers.

Cost Per Impression (CPI): How much it costs you to offer potential customers one opportunity to see your advertisement.

Cost Per Lead (CPL): A pricing model, where the advertiser pays for an explicit sign-up from an interested consumer interested in the advertiser offer.

Cost Per Opportunity (CPO): Opportunity cost is the cost of a foregone alternative. If you chose one alternative over another, then the cost of choosing that alternative is an opportunity cost.

Creative Commons: A non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to share and to build upon, legally.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): The organization and data collection of a brand’s interactions with its customers, used in order to improve account management processes and build deeper customer relationships.

Crowdsource: Sourcing information or participation by enlisting collaboration and services of a group. Crowdsourcing may be paid or unpaid, and is fueled by the viral, instant communication of social and the web.

Curation: Collecting, organizing and displaying information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How much a business needs to allocate in order to acquire an additional customer.

Customer Growth: The percentage change over a period of time in which a customer increases its spend with your brand.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): how much the entire future relationship with a customer is worth.

Customer Journey: The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company and brand.

Customer Retention: Customers who continue to use your products or services because of the content your brand provides.

D.

Demographics: Grouping of a population based on factors such as age, race, sex, economic status, level of education, income level and employment, among others.

Distribution: The strategic process of sharing or disseminating an idea, opinion, or content to others. Content distribution is effective through social media, email, and ad networks.

E.

eBook: An electronic version of a printed book that can be read on a computer or handheld device.

Editorial Calendar: A calendar/ organizational process by which you can schedule your content distribution across multiple distribution channels.

Engagement: The rate at which customers or potential customers interact with your marketing efforts.

Engagement Rate: Ratio of readers who are active and engaging with your content. Reader must engage (move mouse, scroll, click) with the article for 30 seconds or more to be considered “engaged” and accounted for in the percentage.

Exit Rate: The percentage of visitors to a site who actively click away to a different site from your page.

F.

Flashmob: A group of people who suddenly assemble in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act (often a dance) for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.

Forum: A place, (digital or physical) meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.

Follow Friday: Practice on Twitter whereby users suggest other users for their followers to “follow”. Usually designated by the hashtag #FF.

Footer: The bottom section of a web page is also known as a footer. This area typically contains the name of the company or organization that publishes the website, along with relevant copyright information. Some websites may also include basic navigation links, such as “About Us,” “Contact,” and “Help.”

Friend: Connecting with someone on a social media platform; a term usually associated with Facebook. i.e. “we’re Facebook friends.”

G.

Gamification: Is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems. In Marketing, gamification is a tactic used for customer and brand loyalty.

Geolocation: The process of identifying a customer’s location. Often then the next step is to tailor marketing services or offerings to them based on their location.

Google Analytics: A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.

Gross Margin: Profit divided by revenue.

H.

Hangout: (Google+ Hangout) — free video chat service from Google that enables both one-on-one chats and group chats with up to ten people at a time. Focuses more on group interaction rather than the one-on-one face calls of Skype, for example.

Hashtag: On social media sites like Twitter, a phrase or name is prefixed by the pound sign (#) in order to group, identify and search messages on a certain topic.

Hamburger Menu: Three stacked lines, usually in the top left- or right-hand corner of a website, which people can click to see a menu of pages on the site.

Heading: The header of a web page typically includes the company or organization’s logo, as well as the main navigation bar. This section, which resides at the top of each web page is often part of a template, and therefore, is the same across all pages within a website or section of a website.

Hover Over: To have your mouse remain suspended over something.

HTML: HyperText Markup Language; a language for creating things/documents on the internet through a variety of tags and attributes

HTML5: The 5th more “user friendly, multimedia-friendly” version of HTML.

I.

iFrame: An HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website. Often used to insert content from another source (like an ad) into a web page.

Important People: NewsCred’s Audience Insights provides real-time insight into the individual people most important to your brand.

Impression: A measure of the number of times an ad is displayed. Each display counts as one impression.

Inbound Marketing: Advertising through blogs, websites, social media, SEO, whitepapers or other types of content marketing.

Influencer Marketing: A form of marketing that identifies and targets individuals with influence over potential buyers.

Infographic: A visual image such as a chart or diagram used to represent information or data; makes data more digestible and visually appealing.

Internet-Based Advertising: Enables advertisers to reach users based on their inferred interests and demographics (e.g. ‘sports enthusiasts’). It also allows advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser websites.

J.

K.

Keyword: The word(s) or phrase(s) entered into a search engine’s query. One of the most important SEO Strategies brands can employ is to optimize their site pages with content that contains targeted keywords relevant to their product.

Klout: A website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the “Klout Score”, which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. The score is determined by the size of a users social network, as well as the rate and quality of engagement a user’s network has with that user’s content.

L.

Landing Page: The webpage where customers end up after they click your ad.

Lead Generation: The strategic marketing process of driving consumer interest in products and services.

Lead Nurturing: The planned, ongoing communication between a brand and a prospect. Lead nurturing is the process of developing and maintaining prospect relationships in hopes of driving the prospect towards a deal.

Lead Scoring: A way to measure leads based on their perceived value to your brand based of their perceived intent to purchase and value to your brand.

Licensed Content: Content from one provider/publisher that is made available to organizations to publish in full on their owned channels.

Link Building: The process of establishing relevant, inbound links to your website with the intention of gaining higher ranking with the major search engines; helps drive targeted traffic to your site.

Long-Tail Keywords: Lesser searched for keywords that, when combined, have search volumes but when combined, their search volumes may outweigh those of the top ten keywords.

M.

Marketing Qualified Lead: A lead that has been “vetted” to the point that it’s deemed worthy to hand of to the sales team.

Marketing Automation: Software designed to automate repetitive tasks — allows for greater efficiency and less chance for human error.

Market Share: The portion of a market owned by a particular company or product.

Mashup: An application (created by hackers) that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single interface. For example, you could combine the addresses and photographs of your recent travels with a Google map to create a map mashup.

Meme: An item of pop culture (or a version of it) that is popularized and spread virally via the internet and word of mouth. For example, “Texts From Hilary Clinton” featured images of Clinton texting, captioned with comical, made up text conversations.

Metatags: A snippet of HTML code in a web page header that summarizes the content that is on the web page. They do not factor into Google’s algorithms for search.

Microblogging: Sometimes called “Microposts” allow users to share short “snippets” of content, usually a few sentences long. Often the posts come via mobile.

Middle of the Funnel: The part of the buying process where a lead has acknowledged a need for your services, and may or may not be evaluating your offer. MoFu content should drive the lead closer to a deal.

Mobile Marketing: Marketing a service or product on or with a smartphone; benefits include the ability to provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information.

Monetization: Treating your content marketing as a stand-alone profitable business by converting existing traffic into revenue.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): A measure of the predictable and recurring revenue components of your subscription business; the revenue you can bank on month over month.

N.

Native Advertising: Advertising using content within the context of a users experience; becoming more popular for mainstream publishers and looks and functions much like a traditional advertorial.

Navigation: Navigation is both the system(s) that a visitor can use to move around a website (global navigation, breadcrumb trails, related links, pagination (previous/next page), footer navigation, etc.) and the visual manifestation of such systems (hyperlinked text, tabs, buttons, etc.) Website navigation has two main functions: to tell the user where they are, and to enable the user to go somewhere else.

Newsfeed: A feed of content, often news articles, aggregated from your personal networks. For example, the Facebook Newsfeed will display a combination of news about your “friends” as well as news your friends have engaged with and chosen to share publicly.

O.

Offer: The product, features, quality, services etc a company offers for sale to customers. The name and brand of the product are also part of the offering.

Offsite SEO: The number of third-party sites that link back to your content because they feel your brand has authority on the topic.

Of-Page Optimization: Factors that have an affect on your web site or Web page listing in natural search results that you do not control; i.e. popularity and page rank.

On-page Optimization: Ways to effect your site listing in search controlled by you. For example, popularity and page rank.

Organic Search Traffic: Search traffic your site receives from providing the best answer on the internet for a specific search, including branded and unbranded keywords.

Organic Search Share of Voice: The percentage of online conversations in your space that include your brand.

Original (Custom) Content: Content that is new and unique.

Owned Media: A channel that a publisher or brand owns, allowing them to publish virtually whatever type of content they chose and distribute however they see fit. For instance, a blog is an owned media channel.

P.

Paid Media: Distributing content via a paid method such as an advertisement.

Page Rank: An algorithm applied by Google that assigns a rank to a hyperlinked web page. Its basic purpose is to list web pages from the most important to the least important.

Pageviews: How many times a user requests to visit or load your page.

Pay Per Click (PPC): How much you are paying per click for an advertisement or sponsored content. A key performance indicator for many social channels.

Percentage of Leads Sourced by Content Marketing: The percentage of leads you can attribute to content marketing compared to other marketing programs.

Permalink: A static link to a webpage or blog entry. Permission Marketing: The privilege to deliver marketing to a consumer or lead who has “opted in” to receiving your marketing.

Persistent Cookie: A cookie that will only be deleted when you clear your cache.

Portrait vs. Landscape: Portrait orientation is where the height of the page is greater than the width, and is more common for the pages of books. Landscape orientation, where the width of the page is greater than the height, is often used for images that need to be wider than a portrait page.

Promoted Accounts: When a brand pays to promote their account on Twitter in order to gain more followers to gain more followers for greater distribution and awareness.

Promoted Trends: When a brand sponsors a “trend” or “trending topic” on Twitter, usually using a hashtag.

Promoted Tweets: When a brand or individual “promotes” or “sponsors” a certain tweet generally for the purpose of driving traffic to a landing page or to create buzz around a specific event or piece of content (as opposed to gaining followers via a promoted account).

Psychographic Data: Data on consumers based on psychological and behavioral characteristics.

Q.

QR Code: A machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, typically used for storing URLs or other information for reading by the camera on a smartphone. In marketing, these are used on-site or “in-store” to yield and immediately redeemable coupon or discount.

R.

Real-time Marketing: Marketing performed “in-real-time” to determine an appropriate or optimal approach to a particular customer at a particular time and place. For example, Oreo’s real-time reaction to the power outage at the 2013 Super Bowl resulting in extreme virality.

Retargeting: An online platform for advertising that helps bring potential customers who have previously visited your website back to your site.

Retention Rate: Customers who continue to purchase in a subsequent year or buying cycle.

Repeat Visitors: The number of visitors who return to your site because of the helpful content your brand provides them.

Repeat Visitor Ratio: The percentage of visitors who return to your site because of the helpful content your brand provides them versus total site visitors.

Responsive Web Design (RWD): Design approach based on creating a website that provides the optimal experience for every visitor. This includes making navigation and reading easier with minimizing, resizing, panning, and scrolling.

Return on Investment (ROI): The measurable value of your marketing efforts — how you can quantify the value of all types of marketing in terms of lead generation, customer retention, sales etc.

Retweet: The reposting of an individual’s tweet for the purpose of distributing information and community building. Often can be seen as a gesture of goodwill.

Right Rail: The common name for the right-side column of a web page.

S.

Sales Qualified Lead: A prospect that is deemed a viable lead after achieving a particular lead score or maintaining communication and demonstrating intent to purchase with a member of the sales team.

Scrolling: The action of moving displayed text or graphics up, down, or across on a computer screen in order to view different parts of them.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of making your website relevant and important so that it ranks high in the search results for a particular word. Sentiment: The way customers or potential customers are talking about your brand — can be positive, negative or neutral.

Social Advertising: Advertising on social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook through sponsored posts, stories or promoted links or trends.

Social Likes: The total number of visitors who like your content shared on social media networks.

Social Followers: The number of visitors who subscribe to your brand’s social media updates.

Social Targeting: Targeting your advertisements on social channels like Facebook and Twitter to certain groups to increase the relevance of your post to a particular audience. Can also include “excluding” certain groups or locations from seeing your post.

Social Shares: The number of times social network users share a link to your content on their own account.

Sponsored Blog Post: A blog post which you are paid to publish on your blog. This may be written by your brand or by the advertisers.

Sponsored Story: An advertisement option on Facebook, where the brand pays to promote a follower’s interaction with the brand to the follower’s friends. It appears as a timeline brand endorsement from a friend rather than an ad.

Sponsored Update: Paying to extend the reach of a specific post to targeted audiences.

Sticky Feature: Stickiness is anything about a Web site that encourages a visitor to stay longer.

Subscriptions: The number of visitors who subscribe to your content marketing email newsletter – essentially people giving your brand exclusive access to their inbox, opening the opportunity for you to market to them.

T.

Tagging: Referencing a person or brand via a “tag” so that a visitor can link back to the content originator.

Target Audience (or Buyer): the market segment or group of customers that a company is aiming to communicate with or sell to. Time on Page/Site: The length of time a lead or visitor spends on your site.

Taxonomy: A hierarchical classification scheme made up of categories and subcategories of information plus a controlled vocabulary of terms, usually used to describe a specific area of knowledge.

Top of the Funnel (ToFu): The beginning of the sales funnel where a prospect acknowledges a need for a specific product or service. ToFu content serves to educate and inspire the audience, in hopes of moving the audience to the Middle of the Funnel. (see: Middle of the Funnel).

Total Conversions / E-commerce: The percentage of leads who take a desired action.

Typography: The style, arrangement, or appearance of printed letters on a page.

Typographic Hierarchy: A system for organizing type that establishes an order of importance within the data, allowing the reader to easily find what they are looking for and navigate the content.

U.

Unbranded Organic Search Traffic: Search traffic your site receives from keywords that never mention your brand name or products.

Unique Page Views: Each time a unique visitor loads one of your pages. This is counted via a counter or cookies.

User Experience (UX): Often abbreviated to “UX”. In general, user experience refers to the experiences and feelings a user has when interacting with a website or product. UX also refers to the professional field concerned with developing ways to research and improve the user experience.

V.

Value of Customer Lifestyle: A prediction of the total value generated by a customer in the future across the entire customer life cycle.

Viral: The term that describes trending, highly sharable web content.

Visitors: A web user that visits your site.

W.

Widget: A software application with specific functionality.

Word Cloud: A jumble of meaningful keywords. For instance, a social word cloud would pull trending keywords from public social networks to show which topics are being discussed by your audience.

Workflow: Progression of steps (tasks, events, interactions) that comprise a work process, involve two or more persons, and create or add value to the organization’s activities. In a sequential workflow, each step is dependent on occurrence n of the previous step; in a parallel workflow, two or more steps can occur concurrently.